Transformation

I’ve always believed that creating with your hands, planting, cooking, drawing, is not just a physical endeavor; I believe it begins in the heart and moves outward. I’ve always looked forward to spring and planting. I never wear gloves, putting my hands in the dirt is an important part of the process. I love baking bread from scratch, kneading the dough over and over; canning applesauce, peeling all the apples, watching it cook down; making jam that starts at the strawberry patch. It’s all cathartic, brings me back to the roots of my emotions.

Tonight, I put my hands on clay. I put it on the wheel and molded it with my being. Learning to balance and center the clay took a sense of calm inside of me, a quietness that came from the inside out.

To mold and shape the clay took a strength I hadn’t realized. It required me to use my wrists, my forearms, my biceps, my fingers, my heart, my brain, my soul, my core strength.

There are two of us in class. Charlie is not yet divorced, suffering through the anguish of a wife who wants out but wants him to miss her as well. He came back to the wheel after many years of being away, looking for the calm that comes with the clay. Despite many attempts, he could not form the clay to his satisfaction tonight. He could not put into words his emotional turmoil over the most important relationship in his life.

Class was as much about relationships and divorce and recreating our own vision of ourselves and our lives as it was learning about the potentials in a block of clay. Conversation meshed redefining ourselves with changing the shape of a pot. In one simple, unintentional movement, I took a perfectly formed pot and wrecked it, just as in one simple choice, we can ruin a relationship. The instructor showed me what was “fixable” and what required just starting over. It was a familiar lesson. I am not using enough strength in the beginning and too much in the end. Another familiar theme.

We created little “stamps” to use for texture and patterns on later creations. I dabbled with it, but have little desire to spend so much time making something smooth and polished only to rough it up with an imperfect pattern. I’m always looking for simple, clean, easy and pure. Fancy, uniquely syled, elaborate and complicated will never appeal to me – in life or in clay.

It will take me a couple weeks to shape the clay with enough strength, to hold it tightly enough to let it form within my hands. I don’t like to hold onto things so tightly, I’ve found they sometimes transform within my grip into something I don’t recognize. I’ve become someone who loves things loosely, afraid of the feeling of emptiness when it is gone. But tonight, I was reminded that sometimes just holding something tightly can bring back it’s symmetry. Using our own strength we can create something rock solid, tangible, permanent, real.

I will feel it tomorrow.

In my muscles, too.